/Lei  < 


WHAT  CONSTITUTES 

AMSSIONARYCALL 


//  X  \4 

ROBERJ  ESPEER.DD. 

\  i 

i  \  ^  i  j 


INTERCHURCH  WORLD  MOVEMENT 
OF  NORTH  AMERICA 
111  FIFTH  AVEN  UE ,  N  EW  YORK  CITY 


What  Constitutes  A 
Missionary  Call 


An  Address 

Delivered  at  the  Student 
Conferences 


ROBERT  E.  SPEER,  D.D. 

Secretary,  Presbyterian  Board  of 
Foreign  Missions 


INTERCHURCH  WORLD  MOVEMENT 
OF  NORTH  AMERICA 


111  Fifth  Avenue 


New  York  City 


Reprinted  by  the  Interchurch  World 
Movement,  by  Courtesy  of  the  Student 
Volunteer  Movement  For  Foreign 
Missions. 


Price,  5  cents  each,  50  cents 
per  dozen,  $2.75  per  hundred. 


What  Constitutes  A 
Missionary  Call 


What  constitutes  a  missionary  call?  I 
think  almost  all  of  us  are  familiar  with  the 
issue  that  is  involved  in  this  question; 
some  of  us  because  we  have  faced  it  in 
our  own  lives  and  have  tried  to  work  our 
way  through  to  an  answer;  and  some  of 
us  because  we  have  met  it  in  the  lives 
of  other  men,  some  of  whom  were  honest¬ 
ly  endeavoring  to  find  an  answer  to  it, 
and  others  of  whom  were  making  it  a 
cover  for  all  sorts  of  immoral  subterfuges 
and  evasions  and  unveracities  of  char¬ 
acter. 

In  two  regards  it  is  a  good  sign  that 
men  ask  this  question  with  reference  to 
the  work  of  foreign  missions  and  their 
duty  to  it.  It  suggests  that  men  think  of 
the  missionary  enterprise  as  a  solemn  en¬ 
terprise,  an  enterprise  that  is  related  in 
a  singular  way  to  God,  and  over  which 
God  exercises  a  singular  care ;  and  in  the 
second  place  it  indicates  that  they  believe, 
if  they  are  sincere,  that  their  lives  are 
owned  by  a  Person  who  has  a  right  to 
direct  them  and  whose  call  they  must 
await.  When  that  has  been  said,  how¬ 
ever,  I  thirk  everything  has  been  said  that 


4 


What  Constitutes  a 


can  be  allowed  in  favor  of  that  question, 
and  I  want  to  go  on  at  once  to  say  that 
it  is  a  question  which  can  easily  become 
thoroughly  heathen  and  un-Christian. 

By  what  right  do  we  sever  our  life  into 
departments,  either  geographically  or 
otherwise,  and  say  with  reference  to  cer¬ 
tain  departments  of  life,  “Now  I  will  not 
enter  upon  that  sphere  of  life  until  I  have 
a  call  different  in  degree  or  kind  from 
the  call  with  which  I  would  be  satisfied 
to  enter  upon  any  other  department  of 
life?”  What  right  has  any  man  to  be 
willing  to  study  law  under  any  less  posi¬ 
tive  assurance  that  it  is  the  will  of  God 
that  he  should  do  it  than  a  man  must 
have  who  goes  out  into  the  mission  field? 
You  and  I  have  no  right  to  set  off  certain 
departments  of  life  from  other  depart¬ 
ments  and  to  say  of  those,  “Those  de¬ 
partments  are  different  from  others;  we 
will  not  think  of  entering  upon  those 
without  special  divine  sanction,  without 
an  unusual  sort  of  divine  leading  different 
from  the  kind  with  which  we  would  be 
satisfied  to  enter  upon  any  other  branch 
of  service.”  What  is  there  in  the  Rio 
Grande  river  to  compel  a  man  to  have  one 
kind  of  assurance  that  it  is  the  will  of  God 
that  he  should  preach  on  the  south  side 
of  it,  and  another  kind  that  he  should 
preach  on  the  north  side  of  it?  Is  this 
world  so  different  in  different  parts  of 
ft  that  I  should  be  willing  to  work  in  Texas 
on  grounds  that  I  should  not  regard  as 


Missionary  Call 


5 


sufficient  to  allow  me  to  work  in  Mexico? 
What  is  there  in  the  oceans  that  warrants 
a  man  in  demanding  evidence  that  it  is 
the  will  of  God  that  he  should  work  on 
one  side  of  them  that  he  does  not  demand 
as  justifying  his  working  on  the  other? 
This  conception  of  distinction  in  the 
sacredness  of  spheres  of  life  is  pagan. 
Christianity  contends  that  the  whole  life 
and  all  service  are  to  be  consecrated  and 
that  no  man  dare  do  anything  but  the  will 
of  God  and  can  know  nothing  less  or  more 
than  that  it  is  God’s  will  that  he  should 
adopt  any  course.  And  there  can  be  no 
more  than  this  either  required  or  possible 
in  the  case  of  foreign  missions. 

Suppose  I  were  a  slave  owned  by  a 
master,  and  cotton  was  ready  to  be  picked, 
and  the  order  had  gone  out  from  my  mas¬ 
ter  that  the  cotton  must  be  picked  at  all 
hazards  all  over  his  plantation:  because 
he  had  not  come  personally  to  me  to  speak 
to  me,  might  I  plead,  “In  the  absence  of 
any  specific  call  from  my  master,  to  pick 
cotton,  I  will  go  a-fishing,  or  I  will  do 
some  business  of  my  own?”  Is  it  not  a 
fair  analogy?  You  and  I  stand  in  a  world 
where  the  Master’s  work  needs  to  be  done. 
He  has  told  us  to  go  out  into  this  world 
and  do  His  work.  Because  He  has  not 
come  and  spoken  individually  to  us  and 
said,  “This  work  is  your  individual  work,” 
are  we  therefore  free  to  go  about  our  own 
business  ? 

And  if  men  are  going  to  draw 


6 


What  Constitutes  a 


lines  of  division  between  different  depart¬ 
ments  of  service,  what  preposterous  reas¬ 
oning  leads  them  to  think  that  it  requires 
less  divine  sanction  for  a  man  to  spend 
his  life  easily  among  Christian  people 
than  it  requires  for  him  to  go  out  as  a 
missionary  to  the  heathen?  If  men  are 
to  have  special  calls  for  anything,  they 
ought  to  have  special  calls  to  go  about 
their  own  business,  to  have  a  nice  time  all 
their  lives,  to  choose  the  soft  places,  and 
to  make  money,  and  to  gratify  their  own 
ambitions.  How  can  any  honest  Christian 
man  demand  a  call  not  to  do  that  sort  of 
thing,  and  say  that  unless  he  gets  some 
specific  call  of  God  to  preach  the  gospel 
to  the  heathen,  he  has  a  perfect  right  to 
spend  his  life  lining  his  pockets  with 
money?  Is  it  not  absurd  to  allege  that  a 
special  missionary  call  is  necessary,  while 
a  man  may  go  on  any  pretext  into  any 
work  that  means  simply  the  gratification 
of  his  own  will  or  personal  ambitions? 

There  is  a  dilemma  involved  in  this 
erroneous  conception  of  the  missionary 
call.  We  believe  surely  that  God  has  an 
interest  in  the  evangelization  of  the  world. 
If  He  has  an  interest  in  the  evangeliza¬ 
tion  of  the  world, — I  mean  any  particular 
interest  in  it,  that  leads  Him  to  desire  to 
have  it  done, — He  must  have  “called” 
enough  men,  on  the  theory  that  He  does 
call  men  in  that  special  way,  to  evangelize 
the  world.  Well,  it  has  not  been  evangel¬ 
ized.  So  either  God  has  not  called  them, 


Missionary  Call 


7 


or  else  He  has  called  them  and  they  have 
not  gone.  You  who  believe  that  this  kind 
of  a  special  call  is  necessary  have  to  be¬ 
lieve  in  consequence  that  there  are  a  lot  of 
men  around  this  country  who  have  been 
called  in  this  supernatural  way  into  the 
mission  work  and  have  not  gone,  or  else 
that  God  has  no  particular  interest  in  the 
present  evangelization  of  the  world,  or 
else  you  have  to  abandon  this  notion  of 
special  missionary  calls. 

After  all,  what  do  men  mean  when  they 
speak  of  the  necessity  of  a  special  mis¬ 
sionary  call?  Do  they  mean  that  a  man 
has  to  have  some  supernatural  kind  of 
mechanical  indication  of  the  divine  will? 
“A  call,”  men  say,  “for  example,  like  that 
that  came  to  the  apostle  Paul ;  I  would 
be  satisfied  with  that.  Or  the  kind  of  a 
call  I  have  heard  Bishop  Thoburn  speak 
of  ;  I  would  be  satisfied  with  that.”  I  believe 
they  had  these  experiences,  but  I  do  not 
believe  it  is  necessary  that  everyone 
should  have  them.  David  Livingstone 
had  no  such  call.  He  says  himself  that 
he  went  simply  out  of  a  sense  of  duty. 
William  Goodell  had  no  such  call.  He 
consecrated  himself  behind  an  old  tree 
stump  at  Andover  over  his  Bible  and  the 
last  command  of  Jesus  Christ.  Henry 
Martyn,  William  Carey,  Keith-Falconer, 
nine-tenths  of  the  great  missionaries  of 
the  world  never  had  any  such  calls.  Now 
if  a  call  like  this  is  necessary  before  a  man 
may  be  sure  that  it  is  his  duty  to  go  out 


8 


What  Constitutes  a 


to  the  mission  field,  did  these  men  do 
wrong  in  going?  Do  you  say  that  the 
noblest  men  that  ever  served  God  in  the 
world  flew  in  the  face  of  Providence  be¬ 
cause  they  did  not  have  the  particular  sort 
of  call  you  are  asking  for? 

Or  a  man  says  he  wants  a  dream.  The 
other  night  I  dreamed  that  I  went  trout 
fishing,  and  I  met  a  lady,  and  she  asked 
me  for  my  rod,  and  I  loaned  it  to  her,  and 
she  cast  the  fly  through  a  window  of  a 
grain  elevator  and  caught  a  little  black 
puppy.  Now  do  you  mean  to  tell  me  that 
that  was  a  divine  indication  of  what  my 
duty  was  to  be  on  the  following  day? 
And  yet  there  are  scores  of  men  who 
would  laugh  at  this  illustration  who  have 
hid  behind  the  pitiful  evasion  that  they 
lack  a  nocturnal  missionary  call,  who  have 
alleged  if  only  some  divine  leading  might 
come  to  them  of  the  kind  that  came  to 
Paul,  they  would  go.  Dreams  do  not  ex¬ 
empt  men  from  the  use  of  reason.  God 
does  not  call  men  in  absurd  and  frivolous 
ways.  If  God  is  going  to  have  dealings 
with  you,  He  will  have  them  in  the  broad 
daylight.  That  was  the  time  of  all  but 
one  of  Paul's  missionary  visions.  It  is 
not  necessary  for  Him  to  go  about  in  the 
night  when  our  wits  are  asleep  to  show 
us  what  His  will  for  us  in  this  world  is. 
He  is  going  to  deal  with  us  as  men,  and 
expects  us  to  judge  as  we  judge  between 
our  dreams  as  to  what  ones  of  them  are 
nonsense  and  what  ones  of  them  fall  in 


Missionary  Call 


9 


line  with  the  rational  purpose  of  God  for 
us  revealed  in  the  facts  of  the  world  and 
of  our  own  lives. 

Or  a  man  says  that  he  does  not  feel 
specially  called.  Well,  feelings  are  often 
a  mere  matter  of  health ;  more  often  they 
are  a  matter  of  other  things.  They  are 
not  lawless  and  unordered.  You  and  I 
do  not  regulate  our  lives  by  mere  feelings 
in  other  regards.  Feelings  spring  from 
the  stock  of  information  in  our  intellects, 
from  the  attitude  of  our  wills,  from  the 
bearing  of  our  hearts  toward  God  and 
toward  the  world.  If  we  do  not  “feel 
called”  the  most  natural  explanation  is 
not  that  we  are  not  called  but  that  our 
feelings  spring  from  uninformed  minds, 
from  careless  hearts,  from  unsurrendered 
wills.  This  is  the  explanation  of  the  ab¬ 
sence  of  calls  which  Dean  Vaughan  sug¬ 
gested  :  “Know,  and  you  will  feel ;  know, 
and  you  will  pray ;  know,  and  you  will 
help.  You  will  be  ashamed  of  the  slug¬ 
gishness,  of  the  isolation,  of  the  selfish¬ 
ness  which  has  made  you  think  only  of 
your  own  people  and  your  father’s  house.” 
Men  cannot  define  what  they  mean  by  the 
“missionary  call”  without  getting  into 
difficulty,  and  in  the  case  of  all  men  who 
are  really  called  convincing  their  own 
minds,  if  they  are  honest  and  fair  men, 
that  they  must  go,  while  if  they  have  been 
selfish  and  insincere  they  will  discover 
that  they  have  not  been  open  to  any  such 
missionary  call  as  they  allege  they  be- 


10 


What  Constitutes  a 


lieve  to  be  necessary  to  warrant  a  man’s 
going  out  into  the  foreign  mission  field. 

I  believe  that  a  great  deal  of  the  con¬ 
fusion  that  surrounds  this  subject — and 
there  is  much  of  it — springs  from  the  fail¬ 
ure  to  discriminate  between  two  clearly  dif¬ 
ferent  things :  one,  the  will  of  God  for  me  ; 
and  the  other,  the  method  of  the  manifes¬ 
tation  of  that  will  to  me.  It  is  a  matter  of 
no  consequence  to  me  how  God  reveals 
His  will  to  me ;  what  I  want  to  know  is 
what  that  will  is.  It  may  come  in  some 
mysterious  way ;  it  may  come  from  the 
voice  of  a  friend ;  it  may  come  through 
the  influence  of  some  address  or  book.  I 
care  not ;  the  supreme  thing  is  that  God 
has  a  will  for  every  man  of  us,  and  that 
no  man  of  us  has  any  right  to  specify  one 
way,  and  one  way  alone,  in  which  that 
will  may  be  revealed  to  him,  or  to  discrim¬ 
inate  against  any  one  work  in  life  by  con¬ 
ditioning  God  and  requiring  of  Him  some 
peculiar  mode  of  procedure  in  summon¬ 
ing  us  to  that  work. 

The  whole  thing  reduces  itself  to  this 
simple  proposition.  There  is  a  general 
obligation  resting  upon  Christian  men  to 
see  that  the  gospel  of  Jesus  Christ  is 
preached  to  the  world.  You  and  I  need 
no  special  call  to  apply  that  general  call 
to  our  lives.  We  do  need  a  special  call  to 
exempt  us  from  its  application  to  our  lives. 
In  other  words,  the  presumption  under 
which  we  are  living  may  be  held  to  be  the 
presumption  that  the  great  will  of  God  de- 


Missionary  Call 


11 


sired  beyond  the  peradventure  of  a  mis¬ 
take  that  the  gospel  of  His  son  Jesus 
Christ,  the  only  Saviour,  should  be  made 
known  to  the  whole  world,  should  be 
carried  to  every  creature  in  the  world. 
You  and  I  need  no  special  divine  revela¬ 
tion  to  our  own  personal  lives  to  indicate 
that  we  fall  under  that  general  duty. 
What  we  need  is  a  special  call  to  assure 
us  that  we  are  exempt  from  personal 
obedience  to  that  presumptive  and  gen¬ 
eral  duty. 

But  there  are  men  who  say,  “I  deny 
that  there  is  any  such  presumption.  The 
presumption  is  in  favor  of  a  man’s  staying 
just  where  he  was  born.”  Well,  then,  if 
there  is  such  a  presumption  as  that,  it  is 
overcome  by  the  greater  need  of  the 
world.  When  a  man  stands  face  to  face 
with  such  a  need  as  that  which  exists 
here,  and  then  contrasts  it  with  the  need 
that  exists  over  there,  I  believe  he  must 
see  that  that  need  overcomes  any  mere 
presumption,  if  such  did  exist,  in  behalf 
of  a  man’s  staying  here.  But  I  deny  that 
there  is  any  such  presumption.  You  can¬ 
not  defend  the  presumption  that  every 
man  ought  to  stay  in  the  condition  in 
which  he  is  born.  If  I  am  born  in  a  dead¬ 
ly,  unhealthful  region,  is  there  a  presump¬ 
tion  that  I  should  stay  th6re?  If  I  am 
born  a  kleptomaniac,,  is  there  presump¬ 
tion  in  favor  of  my  continuing  so  all  my 
life?  It  is  nonsense  for  men  to  allege 
that  the  mere  fact  of  having  been  born 


12 


What  Constitutes  a 


in  such  and  such  a  condition  puts  them 
under  a  presumption  of  duty  to  remain 
there.  The  fact  that  you  are  born  in  a 
Christian  land  creates  just  the  contrary 
presumption,  the  presumption,  namely, 
that  you  are  to  carry  what  exists  here  to 
the  lands  where  it  does  not  exist. 

There  are  men  who  say,  “No,  you  are 
unfair  in  that.  We  hold  that  there  is  no 
presumption  either  way,  that  every  man 
ought  to  stand  with  a  perfectly  open  and 
impartial  mind  before  the  question  of  the 
duty  of  his  life  to  the  world,  not  casting 
the  weight  on  either  side  of  the  scale.” 
That  would  be  all  right  if  you  and  I  were 
living  in  little  boats  out  in  the  middle  of 
the  Pacific  ocean,  but  it  is  impossible  so 
long  as  we  are  here.  No  presumption! 
Why,  the  atmosphere  in  which  we  live 
coerces  and  shapes  us  in  spite  of  ourselves 
and  creates  a  powerful  actual  presump¬ 
tion.  All  those  tentacles  that  every  day 
are  clinging  closer  and  closer  to  us  are 
setting  at  prejudice  the  interests  of  the 
other  half  of  the  world.  We  do  not  live 
where  it  is  possible  for  any  of  us  to  say, 
“I  will  just  move  along  steadily,  no  pre¬ 
sumption  on  either  side,  until  some  spec¬ 
ial  indication  of  duty  comes  to  me.  I 
believe  that  Keith-Falconer  was  express¬ 
ing  the  truth  when  he  closed  those  last 
addresses  of  his  to  the  students  of  Edin¬ 
burgh  and  Glasgow  with  the  sentence: 
“While  vast  continents  are  shrouded  in 
almost  utter  darkness,  and  hundreds  of 


Missionary  Call 


13 


millions  suffer  the  horrors  of  heathenism 
and  of  Islam,  the  burden  of  proof  rests  on 
you  to  show  that  the  circumstances  in 
which  God  has  placed  you  were  meant  by 
God  to  keep  you  out  of  the  foreign  field.’' 
In  other  words,  every  man  of  us  stands 
under  a  presumptive  obligation  to  give  his 
life  to  the  world  unless  we  have  some 
special  exemption  granted  personally  to 
us  that  excuses  us  from  the  weight  of  this 
general  and  presumptive  obligation. 

I  am  willing  to  go  further  than  that. 
If  I  were  standing  by  the  bank  of  a 
stream,  and  some  little  children  were 
drowning  in  the  stream,  I  would  not  need 
any  officer  of  the  law  to  come  along  and 
serve  on  me  some  legal  paper,  in  which 
my  name  was  definitely  entered,  com¬ 
manding  me  under  such  and  such  penal¬ 
ties  to  rescue  those  drowning  children. 
I  should  despise  myself  if  I  should  stand 
there,  with  the  possibility  of  saving  those 
little  lives,  waiting  until  by  some  legal 
proceeding  I  was  personally  designated 
to  rescue  them.  Or,  if  you  do  not  like 
that  figure,  I  can  suggest  another.  I 
have  some  neighbors  who  are  starving, 
and  I  have  bread  in  abundance,  and  I 
stand  and  watch  them  day  by  day,  with 
pinched  faces,  ravenous,  suffering  agon¬ 
ies,  while  I  have  bread  in  abundance  and 
to  spare.  I  do  not  need  anybody  to  come 
with  any  court  order  specifying  me  as  an 
individual  bound  to  feed  those  hungry 
souls.  You  would  not  either.  Why  do 


14 


What  Constitutes  a 


we  apply,  in  a  matter  of  infinitely  more 
consequence,  principles  that  we  would 
loathe  and  abhor  if  anybody  should  sug¬ 
gest  that  we  should  apply  them  in  the 
practical  affairs  of  our  daily  life?  Listen 
for  a  moment  to  the  wail  of  the  hungry 
world,  feel  for  one  hour  its  sufferings, 
sympathize  for  one  moment  with  its  woes, 
and  then  regard  it  just  as  you  would  re¬ 
gard  human  want  in  your  neighbor,  or  the 
want  that  you  meet  as  you  pass  down  the 
street,  or  anywhere  in  life.  Every  one 
of  us  rests  under  a  sort  of  general  obli¬ 
gation  to  give  life  and  time  and  posses¬ 
sion  to  the  evangelization  of  the  souls 
everywhere  that  have  never  heard  of 
Jesus  Christ,  and  we  are  bound  to  go, 
unless  we  can  offer  some  sure  ground  of 
exemption  which  we  could  with  a  clear 
conscience  present  to  Jesus  Christ,  and 
be  sure  of  His  approval  upon  it. 

Now  what  grounds  of  exemption  are 
just?  A  man  says,  “Well,  the  inability 
to  learn  a  language  constitutes  a  ground 
of  exemption.”  Yes,  if  it  is  real;  but  is 
there  any  man  that  will  allege  that  as 
his  disability?  Most  of  you  talk  one 
language  already.  I  could  imagine  a 
mute  alleging  that  excuse,  but ,  not  an 
adult  man  who  has  managed  to  get  into 
college.  We  have  learned  one  language. 
There  are  a  few  million  babies  in  this 
country  learning  a  language  now,  and 
they  haven’t  nearly  as  good  a  start  at 
learning  a  language  as  you  and  I  have. 


Missionary  Call 


IS 


There  is  a  multitude  of  ignorant  people 
coming  over  here  from  the  slums  of  Eu¬ 
rope,  and  before  very  long  many  of  them, 
with  dull  and  undisciplined  minds,  will  be 
speaking  our  language  fluently.  The 
brain  is  not  the  only  faculty  used  in  the 
acquisition  of  a  new  language.  A  man 
who  mingles  among  the  people  takes  the 
language  in  through  his  pores.  And  af¬ 
ter  all  the  great  faculty  is  the  will.  If  a 
man  wills  to  learn  and  goes  out  among 
the  people,  he  will  learn.  Any  man  who 
has  a  jaw  can  learn  a  second  language, 
just  as  he  learned  a  first,  if  he  wills  to  do 
it  and  sinks  himself  among  the  people  to 
whom  he  goes.  It  is  a  very  different 
thing  learning  a  language  on  the  other 
side  of  the  world  from  trying  to  pick  it 
up  here.  As  Mr.  Wilder  used  to  put  it, 
learning  a  language  here  is  just  like  pour¬ 
ing  water  in  the  little  interstices  of  a 
sponge  for  a  day  or  two  until  you  get  it 
full,  while  learning  a  language  over  there 
is  sousing  your  sponge  in  the  water  and 
letting  it  penetrate  every  pore.  Every 
man  of  us  who  has  learned  one  language 
is  able  to  learn  another  if  we  want  to  and 
will  put  our  lives  into  it. 

Some  one  says,  “Isn’t  want  of  health  a 
sufficient  excuse?”  Yes,  but  you  are  not 
always  a  trustworthy  judge.  In  our 
Board  we  distrust  a  man’s  judgment  on 
this  point  unless  we  know  what  his  own 
personal  attitude  is  toward  the  mission¬ 
ary  enterprise.  We  want  men  to  judge 


16 


What  Constitutes  a 


the  physical  capacities  of  candidates  who 
have  a  heart  for  the  evangelization  of  the 
world  as  well.  I  urge  freely  that  a  man 
who  has  no  proper  physical  qualifications 
ought  not  to  go,  but  I  fear  that  few  men 
are  competent  to  say  for  themselves 
whether  they  are  thus  qualified  or  not.  I 
remember  a  story  that  Mr.  Forman  used 
to  tell  of  an  interview  he  had  with  a 
student  in  the  state  of  Iowa,  who  alleged 
as  a  reason  for  not  going  as  a  missionary 
to  India  that  he  had  had  a  sunstroke. 
He  proposed  accordingly  to  spend  his  life 
in  Iowa.  “Well,  my  friend,”  said  Mr. 
Forman,  “where  did  you  have  that  sun¬ 
stroke?”  “I  had  it  here  in  this  state.” 
“Now,  look  here,”  said  Mr.  Forman,  “I 
have  lived  most  of  my  life  in  India,  and 
I  have  never  had  a  sunstroke,  and  you 
propose  to  spend  your  life  where  you 
have  already  had  one  sunstroke  and 
where  for  all  you  know  you  may  have 
another.” 

Now  Mission  Boards  are  not  looking 
for  men  liable  to  sunstroke.  They  pur- 
pose  to  act  with  good  sense  and  because 
they  do  act  so,  they  know  that  often  a 
man  who  is  not  perfect  physically  will  be 
as  well  in  Chili  or  Korea  or  China  or 
India  as  he  will  be  here  at  home,  and  that 
it  is  worth  while  running  a  little  risk  for 
the  sake  of  the  good  work  that  he  will 
be  likely  to  do.  It  is  exceedingly  easy 
for  the  man  who  wants  to,  to  find 
some  subterfuge  by  which  he  can 


Missionary  Call 


17 


escape  from  the  grip  of  duty  and  the  priv¬ 
ilege  of  glorious  sacrifice  in  life. 

Or  a  man  says,  “Is  not  the  want  of 
spiritual  qualifications  an  adequate  ex¬ 
emption  ?”  Never.  No  self-created  ex¬ 
cuse  can  keep  a  man  out  of  the  mission 
field.  Every  man  of  us  may  have  all  the 
spiritual  qualifications  necessary  for  mis¬ 
sionary  work,  and  if  we  do  not  have  them, 
it  is  a  difficulty  which  springs  from  our 
own  moral  delinquency  and  not  from  any 
of  those  circumstances  beyond  our  con¬ 
trol  in  which  alone  can  lie  an  adequate 
exemption.  A  man  not  spiritually  fitted 
ought  not  to  go,  but  neither  is  he  fit  to 
stay.  His  immediate  duty  is  to  clean  up 
and  empower  his  life. 

Or  a  man  says,  “Is  not  the  great  need 
here  at  home  an  adequate  excuse  ?” 
Where?  where?  What  great  need  do  you 
mean  here  in  the  United  States?  Do  you 
mean  the  great  need  out  in  the  western 
states?  I  could  name  half  a  dozen  on 
the  moment  whose  combined  population 
is  less  than  the  population  of  the  city  of 
New  York,  and  they  are  the  great  home 
mission  field  in  the  west,  and  they  have 
a  Protestant  evangelistic  agency  at  work 
in  them  immensely  greater  than  that  em¬ 
ployed  in  the  whole  city  of  New  York. 
Besides,  are  you  going  there?  As  for  the 
cities,  there  are  in  New  York  below  Four¬ 
teenth  Street  for  about  half  a  million  peo¬ 
ple  more  than  one  hundred  Protestant 
chapels  and  churches.  And  are  you  go- 


18 


What  Constitutes  a 


ing  there?  A  man  is  something  beneath 
contempt  who  alleges  as  a  reason  for  not 
going  to  the  foreign  mission  field  the  ex¬ 
istence  of  a  need  at  home  to  which  he 
has  not  the  slightest  intention  of  devot¬ 
ing  his  life.  He  may  pass  for  a  very  re¬ 
ligious  man,  he  may  be  waiting  piously 
for  a  call,  but  he  is  a  dishonest  man  and 
there  is  a  core  of  insincerity  in  his  heart. 
No,  the  need  here  in  the  United  States 
constitutes  no  adequate  exemption  from 
the  missionary  call.  If  a  man  has  got  a 
special  call  to  some  definite  work  here  at 
home,  I  grant  that  that  may  constitute  an 
exemption.  I  believe  there  are  men  who 
are  exempt  from  the  general  call  because 
of  the  manifestly  definite  and  special 
divine  work  that  is  laid  upon  their  shoul¬ 
ders  here,  but  no  man  dare  allege  a  mere 
general  need  existing  here  at  home,  least 
of  all  a  general  need  which  he  intends 
subsequently  to  ignore,  and  under  the 
cover  of  that,  slip  out  from  the  grip  of 
the  missionary  obligation.  No  man  has 
a  right  to  settle  in  a  little  country  town 
in  Ohio  and  practice  law,  on  the  ground 
that  there  is  so  much  greater  need  for 
Christian  work  in  the  slums  of  New  York 
than  in  central  Africa.  No  man  has  a 
right  to  go  into  business  in  Montreal  un¬ 
der  the  pretext  that  the  vast  West  is  so 
much  more  needy  than  China.  If  I  re¬ 
fuse  to  preach  the  gospel  in  India  be¬ 
cause  it  needs  to  be  preached  in  Arizona, 
or  Assiniboia,  what  relevancy  does  that 


Missionary  Call 


19 


argument  have  to  my  preaching  the  gos¬ 
pel  nowhere,  but  subsequently  settling 
down  to  an  easy  and  selfish  life  in  Sa¬ 
vannah  or  Halifax?  Or  what  consistency 
is  there  in  refusing  to  go  to  Siam  because 
the  need  of  Christian  work  in  the  rural 
districts  in  America  is  so  great,  and  then 
settling  down  to  preach  the  gospel  in 
some  city  or  large  town?  The  fundamen¬ 
tal  necessity  of  life  and  character  is  verac¬ 
ity,  and  such  a  course  is  the  antithesis  of 
veracity. 

Or  a  man  says :  “I  have  already  start¬ 
ed  to  prepare  for  some  work  here  at  home. 
I  am  on  my  medical  course,  or  my  law 
course,  or  my  course  in  pedagogy.  Do 
you  mean  I  am  to  throw  up  all  I  have 
gained  and  go  out  to  the  mission  field?” 
I  do  not  say  so.  I  do  say  that  the  fact 
that  you  have  got  so  far  does  not  consti¬ 
tute  a  presumption  that  you  are  exempt. 
All  that  special  training  may  have  been 
given  you  for  some  specific  purpose ;  no 
knowledge  is  lost  out  on  the  mission  field. 
Besides,  I  ask  you  just  to  stop  and  think 
a  moment.  You  men  have  already  got 
your  professions  chosen  and  are  headed 
toward  them,  and  many  of  you  have  only 
considered  the  necessity  of  a  call  as  a  sprt 
of  afterthought  when  forced  . to  face  for¬ 
eign  "missions you  never  'thought  of.  it 
when  you  were  making  your  choice  of 
your  profession,  but  only  'nc\y  when  the 
missionary  claim  is  pressing  a  little  un¬ 
easily  upon  your  consciences.  But  are 


20 


What  Constitutes  a 


you  sure  that  God  wants  you  to  be  a  doc¬ 
tor  or  a  teacher?  Ought  you  not  to  have 
as  much  assurance  that  it  is  God’s  will 
that  you  should  be,  as  you  think  is  needed 
in  the  case  of  a  foreign  missionary?  As 
a  Christian  man,  your  life  belongs  to 
Christ  and  your  business  is  to  do  the  will 
of  God.  Are  you  convinced  that  it  is  the 
will  of  God  that  you  should  go  on  with 
your  preparation  for  some  secular  work 
at  home?  If  not,  have  you  a  right  to  go 
on  with  it?  If  you  think  you  have,  will 
you  not  admit  the  legitimacy  of  the  same 
element  of  possible  uncertainty  in  the 
missionary  call? 

What  profession  is  it  that  you  believe 
warrants  you  in  giving  your  life  to  it  in¬ 
stead  of  to  the  missionary  enterprise?  Is 
it  law?  I  have  no  word  to  say  against 
the  practice  of  law.  But  I  remind  you,  as 
Mr.  Depew  is  reported  to  have  stated  to 
the  graduating  class  in  the  Yale  Law 
School  some  years  ago,  that  there  were 
then  more  than  60,000  lawyers  in  this 
land;  and,  as  Justice  Brewer  is  said 
to  have  declared  at  a  meeting  of  the 
American  Bar  Association,  in  St.  Louis, 
that  not  much  more  than  one-half  of  that 
number  could  find  legitimate  business  to 
do.  The  rest  had  to  do  other  things 
or  manufacture  illegitimate  business  on 
which  to  live.  The  number  of  lawyers 
has  since  doubled. 

Is  it  medicine .  that  you  are  going 
to  take  up?  There  are  more  than 


Missionary  Call 


21 


150,000  doctors  in  this  country  already, 
one  to  about  every  six  hundred  of  the 
population.  You  well  know  that  there  is 
not  enough  real  sickness  and  disease 
among  that  many  people  to  maintain  a 
doctor,  and  that  is  one  reason  why  there 
are  so  many  quacks  and  corrupt  and  un¬ 
worthy  men  in  the  profession.  The  New 
York  Sun  some  years  ago,  reported  Dr. 
Billings  as  complaining,  at  the  meeting 
of  the  American  Medical  Association  in 
session  in  New  Orleans,  of  the  excess  of 
medical  colleges.  The  country  needed 
about  2500  medical  graduates  annually, 
he  said,  and  it  graduated  10,000  to  12,500. 

Do  you  intend  to  teach?  There  are  more 
than  600,000  teachers  in  this  land  now. 
and  you  very  well  know  that  every  time 
an  attractive  opportunity  presents  itself 
there  are  scores  of  applicants. 

I  present  to  you  an  opening  in  which 
we  cannot  find  enough  men,  doctors, 
teachers,  ministers,  workers  of  all  sorts, 
all  over  the  mission  field;  a  thousand  mil¬ 
lion  sinning  and  suffering  men  and  wom¬ 
en,  and  only  a  little  handful  of  men  and 
women  giving  the  gospel  to  them.  I  do 
not  understand  the  moral  constitution  of 
the  man  who  can  deliberately  face  that 
comparison  and  then  set  up  the  claim  that 
he  feels  he  is  chosen  to  practice  medicine 
or  law  or  teaching  here  in  this  country 
unless  he  has  a  special  call  designating 
him  as  one  of  the  men  to  go  out  to  the 
immensely  greater  need,  and  such  a  call 


22 


What  Constitutes  a 


as  he  has  not  regarded  as  necessary  to 
his  practice  of  medicine  or  law  or  to 
teaching. 

Or  a  man  says,  yet  once  more,  “Is  not 
the  love  of  home  an  exemption?”  Let 
Jesus  Christ  reply.  “He  that  loveth  fath¬ 
er  or  mother  more  than  me  is  not  worthy 
of  me.”  Or  a  man  says,  “Is  not  the  love 
of  life,  the  desire  to  spend  it  richly  here 
an  exemption?”  Let  Jesus  Christ  answer 
again.  “He  that  hateth  not  his  father  and 
his  mother,  and  his  brother  and  his  sister, 
yea,  and  his  own  life  also,  he  cannot  be 
my  disciple.”  Life  an  exemption!  Life 
was  given  us  on  such  terms  as  to  consti¬ 
tute  a  presumption  for  its  expenditure, 
not  to  be  nursed  carefully  in  velvet,  not 
to  be  spent  in  personal  enjoyment,  but  to 
be  poured  out  in  the  richness  of  great 
sacrifice. 

Every  time  I  go  down  south  and 
the  train  stops  long  enough  in  Salis¬ 
bury,  I  go  out  to  the  little  graveyard 
in  the  middle  of  the  town  and  walk  to  a 
grave  in  the  center  of  the  yard  that  I 
found  many  years  ago  when  I  was 
wandering  through  the  cemetery  be¬ 
tween  trains.  I  remember  still  the  first 
summer  day  when  I  came  upon  that 
grave.  Something  on  the  stone  caught 
my  eye. from  a  distance.  I  came  up  and 
read  upon  it  the  inscription  which  stated 
that  there, lay  the  body  of  F.  M.  Kent, 
Lieutenant  Colonel  of  the  First  Louisiana 
Regulars,  who  died  in  1864,  in  the  month 


Missionary  Call 


23 


of  April,  and  underneath  were  these 
words:  “He  gave  his  life  for  the  cause 
that  he  loved.”  Near  by  was  the  grave 
of  John  R.  Pearson,  First  Lieutenant  of 
the  Seventh  Regiment  of  North  Carolina, 
who  was  shot  at  Petersburg,  at  the  age 
of  eighteen,  and  beneath  the  name  and 
simple  record  were  the  words,  “I  look 
for  the  resurrection  of  the  dead.”  And  I 
took  off  my  hat  and  stood  beside  the 
graves  of  the  eighteen-year-old  lieuten¬ 
ant  and  the  older  colonel  who  had  given 
their  lives  for  the  cause  that  they  loved. 
Did  they  wait,  do  you  suppose,  until  Jef¬ 
ferson  Davis  had  served  a  personal  sum¬ 
mons  upon  them?  Was  that  the  way 
men  did  in  those  days?  Did  they  refuse  to 
volunteer  in  1861  until  they  had,  each  man 
of  them,  a  personal  call  with  his  own 
name  filled  in,  signed  by  the  hand  of 
Abraham  Lincoln  or  Jefferson  Davis? 
Men  then  despised  the  spirit  that  would 
have  prompted  such  an  attitude.  Shall 
men  do  less  than  despise  it  now? 

This  whole  business  of  asking  for  spec¬ 
ial  calls  in  the  missionary  work  does  vio¬ 
lence  to  the  Bible.  No  man  thinks  of 
interpeting  his  Bible  so  in  other  mat¬ 
ters.  There  is  the  command,  “Go  ye  into 
all  the  world,  and  preach  the  gospel  to 
every  creature.”  You  say,  “That  means 
other  men.”  There  is  the  promise,  “Come 
unto  me,  all  ye  that  labor  and  are  heavy 
laden,  and  I  will  give  you  rest.”  You 
say,  “That  means  me.”  You  must  have  a 


24 


What  Constitutes  a 


special  divine  indication  that  you  fall  un¬ 
der  the  command ;  you  do  not  ask  any 
special  divine  indication  that  you  fall  un¬ 
der  the  blessing.  By  what  right  do  we 
draw  this  line  of  distinction  between  the 
obligations  of  Christianity  and  its  privi¬ 
leges,  and  accept  the  privileges  as  apply¬ 
ing  to  every  Christian  and  relegate  its 
obligations  to  the  conscience  of  the  few? 

It  does  violence  to  the  working  of  the 
spirit  of  God.  He  does  not  work  over 
men's  faculties ;  He  works  through  them. 
In  every  other  department  of  life  He  does 
it;  He  will  do  it  in  this  department,  or 
He  will  not  work  at  all. 

It  does  violence  to  the  ordinary  canons 
of  common  sense  and  honest  judgment. 
We  do  not  think  of  ordering  other  de¬ 
partments  of  our  life  on  this  basis.  By 
what  right  do  we  single  out  this  depart¬ 
ment  and  apply  to  it  these  exceptional 
canons?  I  think  ex-President  Patton  of 
Princeton  was  representing  the  situation 
truthfully  when  he  used  the  illustration: 
that  if  he  was  employed  by  the  owner  of 
a  great  vineyard  to  gather  grapes  in  the 
vineyard,  and  the  general  instructions 
were  that  as  many  grapes  as  possible 
should  be  gathered,  and  he  came  down 
to  the  gate  of  the  vineyard  and  found 
there  around  the  walls  the  vines  well 
plucked  and  the  ground  covered  over  with 
pickers,  and  away  off  in  the  distance  no 
pickers  at  all  and  the  vines  loaded  to  the 
ground,  he  would  not  need  any  special 


Missionary  Call 


25 


visit  and  order  from  the  owner  of  the 
vineyard  to  instruct  him  as  to  what  his 
duty  was.  Do  we? 

There  is  something  wonderfully  mis¬ 
leading,  full  of  hallucination  and  delusion 
in  this  business  of  missionary  calls.  With 
many  of  us  it  is  not  a  missionary  call  at 
all  that  we  are  looking  for ;  it  is  a  shove, 
that  is  all.  There  are  a  great  many  of 
us  who  would  never  hear  a  call  if  it  came ; 
somebody  must  come  and  coerce  us  be¬ 
fore  we  will  go  into  the  missionary  work. 
There  are  men  who  say  they  would  go 
if  they  were  called,  but  they  would  not 
go.  Back  in  Jesus’  day  men  thought  they 
would  do  things  if  they  only  had  certain 
evidence,  but  when  the  evidence  came 
they  did  not  do  them.  We  think  we 
would  believe  on  Christ  if  we  saw  Him. 
Most  of  the  men  who  saw  Him  did  not 
believe  on  Him.  It  is  the  old  rebuke  of 
Abraham  over  again.  “Father  Abraham,” 
said  the  outcast,  “will  you  not  send  some 
special  messenger  to  warn  my  brothers?” 
Said  Abraham,  “They  have  Moses  and 
the  prophets ;  if  they  will  not  hear  them, 
neither  will  they  be  persuaded,  though 
one  rose  from  the  dead.”  There  are 
many  men  who  say  they  would  believe 
in  Christianity  if  they  had  a  miracle. 
They  would  not  believe  in  Christianity 
if  they  had  a  miracle.  The  men  who  will 
not  believe  in  Christianity  without  a  mir¬ 
acle  will  not  believe  in  Christianity  with 
one.  The  men  who  will  not  go  out  to  the 


26 


What  Constitutes  a 


mission  field,  as  a  rule,  without  this  speci¬ 
fied  method  of  being  called  would  not 
recognize  it  if  it  came.  It  is  just  a  mat¬ 
ter  of  the  whole  bias  and  bent  of  a  man’s 
character,  whether  he  is  one  of  these  re¬ 
luctant,  stagnant  men,  the  men  who  stand 
still  until  they  are  pushed,  or  one  of  these 
aggressive,  eager  men,  the  men  who  move 
until  they  are  stopped.  I  like  to  go  back 
and  read  over  and  over  the  life  of  the 
Apostle  Paul  as  illustrative  of  the  right 
type  of  man.  He  never  sat  down  and 
waited  for  a  dream  to  come  and  guide 
him ;  he  never  waited  for  any  external 
mechanical  directions  to  shape  his  course. 
He  was  working  through  what  we  now 
call  Asia  Minor,  and  his  path  was  deter¬ 
mined  by  indications  of  the  Spirit,  not 
as  to  what  he  should  do,  but  as  to  what 
he  should  not  do.  The  Spirit  forbade 
work  in  Asia.  He  tried  Bithynia,  and 
was  again  blocked.  So  he  came  down  to 
Troas  through  walls  of  negative  guidance 
(Acts  xvi:  6-8).  Paul  did  not  say:  “I 
will  wait  till  I  feel  a  call.”  He  pressed 
ahead  until  he  was  obstructed.  There  is 
a  deal  too  much  lethargic  waiting  for 
divine  guidance,  when  what  God  is  want¬ 
ing  is  to  see  some  sign  of  life  and  move¬ 
ment  to  guide.  You  can  steer  a  moving, 
but  not  a  motionless  ship.  Doubtless  a 
man  may  bustle  about  so  in  his  own  fussy 
plans  as  to  be  in  no  fit  condition  to  hear 
divine  counsel  or  to  seek  it;  but  there  is 
no  warrant  in  Paul’s  method  for  the 


Missionary  Call 


27 


course  of  those  who  dislike  to  move  to¬ 
ward  the  foreign  field  unless  compelled 
from  without. 

At  the  end  of  this  hedging  in  and  hedg¬ 
ing  off,  Paul  got  some  positive  leading; 
but  even  then  his  conclusion  of  duty  was 
an  inference.  He  interpreted  his  dream 
in  the  spirit  of  his  life.  He  was  a  going 
man  and  he  was  looking  for  beckonings. 
It  was  the  man  not  the  dream  that  led 
to  his  crossing  into  Europe.  Some  mod¬ 
ern  evader  would  have  called  it  a  mere 
dream,  and  pronounced  it  utterly  insuffi¬ 
cient  reason  for  any  such  serious  forward 
step. 

Ramsay  thinks  the  Macedonian  whom 
Paul  saw  was  Luke.  How  otherwise 
could  Paul  know  it  was  a  Macedonian 
than  by  recognizing  a  Macedonian  ac¬ 
quaintance?  There  was  nothing  peculiar 
in  the  dress  of  the  Macedonians,  and 
Luke  was  probably  the  only  Macedonian 
he  knew.  “We  can  imagine,”  says  Ram¬ 
say,  “how  Paul  came  to  Troas,  in  doubt 
as  to  what  should  be  done.  As  a  harbor 
it  formed  the  link  between  Asia  and 
Macedonia.  Here  he  met  the  Macedonian 
Luke ;  and  with  his  view  turned  onwards 
he  slept,  and  beheld  in  a  vision  his  Mace¬ 
donian  acquaintance  beckoning  him  on¬ 
ward  to  his  own  country.” 

Possibly  Paul  and  Luke  had  been  sit¬ 
ting  up  late  that  night  talking  about 
Macedonia,  and  Luke  had  urged  argu¬ 
ments  by  which  he  would  persuade  Paul 


28 


What  Constitutes  a 


to  come  over  there,  and  when  Paul  went 
to  sleep,  he  was  full  of  Luke’s  arguments, 
and  at  last  had  his  dream  and  there  was 
Luke  again  appealing  to  him  to  go  over 
to  Macedonia.  It  was  not  the  dream  that 
took  Paul  over.  It  was  the  last  confirma¬ 
tion,  but  Paul  would  have  got  to  Mace¬ 
donia  without  any  such  dream.  The 
dream  was  not  the  call.  The  facts  of 
the  world  and  of  Paul’s  own  life  were 
shaping  his  course  according  to  the  will 
of  God.  He  was  the  sort  of  man  who 
did  not  wait  for  external  guidance,  who 
sat  down  until  somebody  came,  upset  him 
and  made  him  go;  he  was  the  type  of 
man  who  fixed  his  eyes  on  a  great  goal 
and  moved  toward  it.  “Yea,”  he  says, 
“so  I  have  been  ambitious.”  What  for? 
A  special  call?  “Yea,  so  I  have  been  am¬ 
bitious  to  preach  the  gospel,  not  where 
Christ  has  been  already  named,  lest  I 
should  build  upon  another  man’s  foun¬ 
dation:  but,  as  it  is  written,  To  whom 
he  was  not  spoken  of,  they  shall  see ;  and 
they  that  have  not  heard  shall  under¬ 
stand.”  (Rom,  15:20,  21.) 

Well,  you  ask,  Do  I  mean  that  you 
should  take  your  lives  in  your  own  hands 
in  this  matter?  That  is  precisely  what  I 
am  protesting  against.  That  is  exactly 
what  we  have  done.  We  have  taken  our 
lives  in  our  own  hands  and  proposed  to 
go  our  own  way  unless  God  compels  us 
to  go  some  other  way.  What  I  ask  is 
that  we  should  give  our  lives  over  into 


Missionary  Call 


29 


Christ’s  hands,  to  go  Christ’s  way  until 
God  shall  reveal  to  us  some  special  indi¬ 
vidual  path  on  either  side  of  that  great 
general  way  which  Jesus  Christ  has 
marked  out  before  His  church  and  for 
which  He  is  calling  everywhere  for  men. 

But  you  say,  “Do  you  mean  that  every 
one  is  to  go  or  to  try  to  go?”  No,  I  do 
not.  I  am  not  trying  to  specify  any 
course  of  duty  for  any  man,  or  any  meth¬ 
od  of  the  revelation  of  duty  to  life.  God 
has  His  own  way  of  guiding  every  life. 
I  believe  He  wants  men  as  Christian  law¬ 
yers,  doctors,  teachers,  business  men, 
ministers,  artisans  at  home.  And  I  be¬ 
lieve  that  if  we  neglect  our  own  house  or 
nation  we  are  worse  than  infidels.  What 
I  am  trying  to  do  is  to  cut  out  some  of 
those  quibbles  and  sophistries  and  self- 
deceptions  by  which  men  satisfy  them¬ 
selves  in  the  evasion  of  missionary  duty 
and  to  correct  honest  misconceptions 
which  confuse  and  mislead  men.  I  plead 
that  the  missionary  duty  be  given  its  fair 
consideration  in  the  investment  and  use 
of  life. 

I  want  to  say  three  last  things. 

In  the  first  place  God  does  not  want 
any  conscripts.  If  that  is  what  you  are 
waiting  for, — to  be  conscripted, — I  do  not 
believe  that  the  call  will  come.  What  He 
wants  is  volunteers,  men  who  will  give 
themselves  in  the  spirit  of  Isaiah,  “Here 
am  I,  Lord;  send  me.” 

In  the  second  place,  for  each  true  Chris- 


30 


What  Constitutes  a 


tian  the  post  of  sacrifice  and  of  difficulty 
is  the  post  of  presumptive  duty.  I  do  not 
understand  how  a  man  can  turn  aside  to 
make  a  fortune  here,  to  gratify  an  am¬ 
bition  here,  without  a  special  call.  I  do 
understand  how  a  man  can  feel  that  with¬ 
out  such  a  call  it  is  his  duty  to  give  him¬ 
self  to  the  post  of  greatest  toil  and  earthly 
loss  and  danger.  I  remember  one  of  the 
illustrations  that  Mr.  Charles  Studd  used 
when  he  was  here,  of  the  appeal  that  was 
made  for  volunteers  before  the  Ashanti 
expedition  went  some  years  ago  to  Africa. 
They  called  out  at  Windsor  the  Scots 
Guards,  and  the  colonel  commanding 
made  a  frank  statement  of  just  what  the 
expedition  was  and  what  was  involved, 
and  then  he  called  for  volunteers,  and  he 
turned  away  for  a  moment,  and  when  he 
turned  back  the  whole  line  was  standing, 
apparently  just  as  it  had  been  before. 
He  looked  up  and  down  the  line  for  a 
moment  in  indignation,  and  then  he  said, 
“What!  the  Scots  Guards,  and  no  volun¬ 
teers  !”  and  one  of  the  officers  standing 
by  said,  “Colonel,  the  whole  line  stepped 
forward.”  They  were  not  waiting  for  any 
specific  personal  injunction.  Every  man 
jumped  at  the  chance  of  sacrifice,  recog¬ 
nized  in  the  call  to  hardship  and  danger 
the  glorious  call,  and  would  only  be 
turned  back  from  it,  as  Gideon’s  compan¬ 
ies  turned  back,  when  specially  exempted 
by  the  elimination  of  God. 

And,  last  of  all,  I  think  love  will  hear 


Missionary  Call 


31 


calls  where  the  loveless  heart  will  not 
know  that  they  are  sounding.  Will  you 
look  in  your  own  heart  again  and  make 
sure  whether  or  not  the  call  has  not  been 
there  all  the  time?  Have  you  been  near 
enough  to  Jesus  Christ  to  hear  Him 
speak?  Has  your  heart  been  open  enough 
to  the  world  in  sympathy  and  love  to 
hear  the  wail  of  its  woe?  If  there  were 
a  hundred  little  children  crying,  a  mother 
would  be  able  to  pick  out  the  voices  of 
her  own,  especially  if  they  were  voices 
of  pain  and  suffering.  There  is  a  mighty 
keenness  in  the  ears  of  love,  and  I  won¬ 
der,  whether,  after  all,  that  may  not  ex¬ 
plain  a  great  deal  that  one  is  perplexed 
over  in  this  matter  of  special  missionary 
calls,  whether  after  all  it  is  not  often  just 
a  matter  of  callous  heart,  of  reluctant  will, 
of  sealed  mind. 

God  so  loved  the  world  that  He  gave. 
It  was  need  in  the  world  plus  love  in  God 
that  constituted  the  call  to  Christ.  Do 
we  need  more  than  sufficed  for  Him?  If 
they  were  our  own,  would  we  hesitate  and 
hold  back? 

“What  if  your  own  were  starving, 
Fainting  with  famine  pain, 

And  yet  you  knew  where  golden  grew 
Rich  fruit  and  ripened  grain, 

Would  you  turn  aside  while  they 
gasped  and  died, 

And  leave  them  to  their  pain?” 

Let  us  lay  aside  now  all  double-dealing, 
all  moral  subterfuge,  all  those  shuffling 


32 


evasions  by  which  the  devil  is  attempting 
to  persuade  us  to  escape  from  our  duty, 
and  let  us  get  up  like  men  and  look  at  it 
and  do  it.  Students  are  old  enough  to 
decide  to  do  their  duty.  They  are  old 
enough  to  decide  to  go  to  college,  they  are 
old  enough  to  decide  for  law  and  medicine 
and  other  professions ;  they  are  old 
enough,  too,  to  decide  this  question  also. 
God  forbid  that  we  should  try  behind  any 
kind  of  pretext  to  hide  from  the  solemn 
personal  consideration  of  our  vital  duty. 
“Go  ye  out  into  the  ignorant  and  sinful 
world  and  preach  the  gospel  to  the  lost.” 
Have  you  any  reason  for  not  going  that 
you  could  give  to  Jesus  Christ?  That  is 
the  real  question  for  every  man  of  us. 


No.  216,  l  25.  Nov.  1919. 


No.  216, 1,  25  Nov  1919 


